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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29423847">...After all, they’re family.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/DegeneracyWasTaken/pseuds/DegeneracyWasTaken'>DegeneracyWasTaken</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF, mcyt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Adopted Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Family Dynamics, Family Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:55:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,295</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29423847</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/DegeneracyWasTaken/pseuds/DegeneracyWasTaken</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A man sets out on a quest to save his family, family who haven’t even met yet.</p>
<p>Technoblade is confused, Tommy is annoying, Wilbur is a good brother and Phil is a shit dad (but a really great friend).</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dream SMP Ensemble &amp; Sleepy Bois Inc., Phil/His wife</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>PROLOGUE</p>
<p>...I can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like. Had I not decided to tell this story, had I ignored this timeline of events and continued on my path.</p>
<p>I probably would’ve, honestly. Had it not been for them. I would’ve erased all my hard work, decided to head home without caring, thinking that because these people weren’t the ones I knew that somehow they were lesser.</p>
<p>...Hah. I’m an idiot.</p>
<p>The more I think about this whole thing, it seems stupid. I’ve tried before to help these people, to watch over this dysfunctional family. </p>
<p>I’ve failed so many times over, I can hardly distinguish the turns in the timeline from each other.</p>
<p>Each time, I return back here, to the blinding whiteness of the inbetween, and the cycle continues. I hate it. I hate it so honking much that I wish I could stop.</p>
<p>But I can’t, can I? As much as I try to step away, focus on the goal I should be focusing on, I can’t help but return to this timeline, watch as they slowly destroy themselves and those around them, and I remember that, hey, I’ve seen this situation before.</p>
<p>I’ve seen this same thing, a group of people slowly dying and distancing themselves and ruining their relationships so, so, so many times.</p>
<p>I’ve never been able to save them.</p>
<p>Never.</p>
<p>...Maybe that’s why I always return here, to the beginning of this story, ready to tell it again with a quill of memories dipped in the ink of hope.</p>
<p>...I have to save them now, don’t I? I have to make this world right again. If not for myself then for my friends on both their side and my own.</p>
<p>I’ve become attached to the way of life, the people that I’ve met through this world. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that the people here as just as much my friends as those from my own world.</p>
<p>...I need to save them. No matter the cost. No matter how many tries it takes, no matter the cost to myself.</p>
<p>...After all, they’re family.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 1 - TECHNOBLADE</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>CHAPTER ONE: TECHNOBLADE</p>
<p>Techno don’t know what to think about other people. </p>
<p>They’re interesting, sure, and he loves to watch them, study their movements and what they say, but the moment they turn to look at him? </p>
<p>Ahh gods, Techno hates it.</p>
<p>It’s not so much the idea that he hates attention. No, he’s fairly neutral to it, and in some cases even enjoys it, but when all focus is suddenly put on him, and he’s forced to have to do something, say something on the spot? </p>
<p>Yeah, Techno despises that.</p>
<p>He’s grown to be regarded as the ‘smart one’ by most of his peers. ‘The capable one’, the ‘one that never attends class yet somehow aces every test’. People always come to him for answers, to cheat off of him or use his intellect to help him solve an issue they have.</p>
<p>He hates it. He feels as if all the people at school are suffocating him, forcing him into a rule that he refuses to accept.</p>
<p>They call him ‘the smart one’, and then only ever see him as that. He’s never Techno to them. Just some smart kid that they can use to their advantage.</p>
<p>They come to him, stare at him, ask him questions on the spot that he can’t help but answer with a quick “Yes,” to.</p>
<p>He struggles with peer pressure, has all his life, and this role he’s forced into at school? It takes advantage of that, fully.</p>
<p>Techno’s issues with social anxiety have never much helped the issue, either. He’s terrified of speaking up, telling his classmates to do their own work, to leave him alone.</p>
<p>He convinces himself that he has to, because he is smart, most, if not all, schoolwork is easy for him, and it’s not like he doesn’t have free time on his hands.</p>
<p>...He hasn’t attended a single class in months. Of course he has free time.</p>
<p>...Haha. Techno really hates school. He hates the authority of it, the way your worth is determined by your conformity and not your intelligence, the way that your social standing is determined only by other people’s stupid opinions.</p>
<p>Fights aren’t like that.</p>
<p>Fights are pure force, a pure form of conflict between one combatant to another, a battle determined by only your will to succeed. </p>
<p>Techno likes fighting. It’s one reason he hardly ever attends class.</p>
<p>He’s not a delinquent, by any means, but during schooltime, those who do go by that name will hang out in the park nearby, smoking and getting into brawls over nothing but pure enjoyment of the damn fight.</p>
<p>Techno likes those guys. Of course, some of them are genuine assholes, but most are similar to him: teenagers who feel abandoned by the school system and the adults in their lives so they turn to other ways to vent their feeling out, without hurting the missing parental figures in their life, a way to flip off the adults and the system that have made their lives the way it is.</p>
<p>Techno really likes that. The adrenaline of a fight is one thing, but the idea of disobeying authority, the idea of breaking the glass box he’s been forced into all his life simply for being different?</p>
<p>That’s exhilarating.</p>
<p>So Techno fights, and he completes his peers homework, and he fights some more to vent out his anger. He ignores the feeling that maybe his life is worth something more, that he should be working towards something bigger, something better in life.</p>
<p>Because that’s the way he is. He’s Techno, Technoblade, if you will, child of no-one and slave to the world. He fights, and he writes, and he keeps quiet, just like he’s supposed to.</p>
<p>Because as much as Techno loves disobeying authority, he’s still just a teenage guy, and what use is being smart and okay in a fight going to have in a world dictated by societal expectations?</p>
<p>...Ah, man. He needs to stop dwelling on this. It’ll only make matters worse. </p>
<p>Techno lives at number 1, Wenston Avenue, and he kind of likes that, because it’s right near the park and his school, so he can easily walk to either. </p>
<p>His current supervisors are Mr. and Mx. Sorrel, who’re an older couple with absolutely nothing interesting about them whatsoever. </p>
<p>Mr Henry Sorrel works as an architect, which sounds cool, but really isn’t when you realise he spends all his time drawing lines with a ruler on bits of squared blue paper in an office.</p>
<p>Mx Andi Sorrel is just as boring. They work at Techno’s school as a teaching assistant, which would be fine, did Techno ever actually attend any lessons spare registration at the beggining of each.</p>
<p>Neither supervisor really acts like a parent, and Techno’s fine with that. He doesn’t want parents, not really, and calling them his temporary supervisors instead of his foster parents works fine for him.</p>
<p>Neither Sorrel really cares much about what Techno does, spare an occasional glare from Mx Sorrel when he leaves class thirteen minutes after it begins.</p>
<p>He hardly even talks to them, making his own food and eating alone in his bedroom, hastily scrawling answers for homework assignments people have given to him.</p>
<p>The only time they ever interact with Techno is on the rare days he’s sent off to visit his brother, a quick “Be good,” and “Don’t bother his family,” before he boards the train.</p>
<p>Ah yes, Wilbur. Techno’s brother.</p>
<p>They’re not brothers in a conventional sense, more like cousins if you consider their actual blood relation, but since they were born on the exact same day, they’re good as twins in the foster system.</p>
<p>Hell, Techno hadn’t even known Wilbur existed until the grand age of 10, thrown into the same foster home together and told they were related. </p>
<p>Of course, Techno still thinks of Wilbur as his brother. He’s his only blood relative left, and as the elder by 20 minutes, he feels a strange urge to protect him.</p>
<p>Wilbur is tall, taller than Techno, and far less awkward. Wilbur can easily charm anyone with his words, and his looks are nothing to ignore either. He has the voice of an angel, and the guitar skills to support it.</p>
<p>Techno would go as far as to say that Wilbur Soot is everything Technoblade is not: smooth, good with people, popular… Wilbur’s even in good terms with adults, something that still confuses Techno to this day.</p>
<p>Of course, he wouldn’t call Wilbur perfect, he isn’t that much of an idiot. Wilbur is terrible at physical matters like sports, and he while Techno is considered a child genius, Wilbur only excels in certain subjects like geography and politics.</p>
<p>But what Wilbur’s good at, he’s really good at, and with that, added to his incredible social skills, he far surpasses Techno in actual worth to others.</p>
<p>Because while Techno is a tool, a way to get good grades and then forget about, Wilbur is a friend. He’s someone people rely on, not because it’s in their best interests, but because they trust him.</p>
<p>...Techno wonders how they’re related, knowing how different they are, how much better Wilbur is. </p>
<p>He’s dwelling again. Thinking useless thoughts with no real goal in mind.</p>
<p>Techno stretches, sitting up straighter in his chair and feeling his back crack in pain. He checks his clock.</p>
<p>15:03. huh.</p>
<p>It’s a weekend, and Techno never really has much to do now. He spends most weekends sitting in, teaching himself about mythology, or philosophy, or one of the myriad other subjects he’s hyper-fixated on.</p>
<p>It’s not too late, so Techno stands, and stretched properly, raising his arms to the ceiling. </p>
<p>Techno’s room is moderately sized, if slightly bare. He’s never had much care for personal belongings, so the only things he really has in his room are his bookshelf full of textbooks and mythology anthologies and his laptop.</p>
<p>The walls are blank, his bedding white and well-made and no other facets of his room give any indication as to the kind of person Techno is.</p>
<p>He kinda likes it that way. Maybe it’s his edgy chuuni side talking, the childhood he never got to have, but the idea of being this mysterious, indiscernible person is appealing to him.</p>
<p>His wardrobe is similar, mostly plain black and white shirts, and folded pairs of jeans. The only item of clothing he has even a remote attachment to is his coat, a red number with a fur trim that Wilbur gave him for his birthday.</p>
<p>“It’s like a king’s robe!,” He’d said, grinning slightly. “To prove that you’re royalty.”</p>
<p>...Royalty, huh? He wasn’t sure if he liked that idea. After all, kings were meant to be leaders, to fight on a side, to govern people.</p>
<p>Hah. Techno was anything but royalty.</p>
<p>He grabs his coat, and pulls it on, stepping into his trainers as he does it.</p>
<p>He checks his wallet quickly, sighing in relief when he realises he still has enough for the train to and from Wilbur’s place tomorrow, with the spare for this trip.</p>
<p>His plan is fairly simple. He’ll head to the convenience store and grab some coke, then hang out in the park for a couple hours before it gets dark. If anyone decides to come around looking for a fight, well- that’s their problem, isn’t it? </p>
<p>He leaves his room, and heads downstairs, shouting a quick “Going out!” to the silent inhabitants of the house. There’s no answer, as per usual, and Techno sighs before leaving.</p>
<p>The convenience store is only a few blocks away, directly opposite to the park. It’s run by an elderly couple whom don’t really care much for what their customers do. </p>
<p>Techno’s seen his fighting buddies buy cigarettes straight from the counter without the owners giving a second thought to their age. </p>
<p>It’s fairly large, and Techno’s found himself idly leaning on the crisp stand to read the latest edition of History Weekly more than once. </p>
<p>It’s this convenience store he enters, at exactly 03:30 on the dot.</p>
<p>...Ow.</p>
<p>Techno finds himself walking straight into another guy, slightly shorter then himself, wearing an eccentrically coloured hoodie and muttering to himself like the green haired protagonist of a certain show that he’d never admit to watching because he’s not a weeaboo, no matter what the guys at school may say.</p>
<p>He takes a step back, and holds his hands up in a gesture of non offense. “Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to- That is- You just appeared, I wasn’t…” </p>
<p>He cuts himself off, annoyed at his own incompetence. He’s impossibly awkward around strangers, this is a fact that he’s fully aware of, but the look on the other guy’s face is one that he doesn’t fully understand, and he’s not entirely sure he wants conflict right now.</p>
<p>“Ah, yeah. I get it!” The other guy smiles, shrugging. “It happens. I’m Karl Jacobs, by the way!” He extends a hand towards Techno, and Techno suddenly thinks that the ground is very interesting, and fixates on a leaf that’s blowing across the concrete outside the convenience store.</p>
<p>He can’t really understand this guy- well, he can’t really understand other people in general, but this guy, Karl, he says his name is, is particularly hard to decipher. What kind of guy introduces themself right after bumping into someone?</p>
<p>He begrudgingly shakes Karl’s hand before withdrawing his own and shoving his hand deep into his coat pocket, still refusing to look directly at this teenager whom appears to be his own age.</p>
<p>“Techno. Just Techno.”</p>
<p>Karl grins again, and Techno can’t help but wonder... Just who is this guy?</p>
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